Our Widening Country, City Divide

There has always been a country-city divide in America, with a swath of stereotypes belonging to each. The urban and rural embody different art, culture, scenery, mores, and religious inclinations, more often than not. However, new studies show that these division may be solidifying and building into an ever-greater chasm. As The Atlantic’s CityLab reports, college graduates are migrating to cities (the larger, the better) in droves:

Overall, larger and more vibrant metros with strong knowledge economies, abundant artistic and cultural amenities, and open-minded attitudes are the ones that are attracting and retaining the most college graduates. On the flip side, these metros are losing less-educated residents who are increasingly unable to make ends meet. They are instead moving to smaller, less affluent, lower-cost places. In fact, we found no statistical association whatsoever between the movement of college grads and the net movement of those who did not finish high school. These very different migration patterns reinforce the ongoing economic and social bifurcation of the United States.

There are a few problems with this sorting pattern that are likely to affect (and indeed, already have affected) the cultural and economic structure of the U.S.

First, this pattern of migratory movement does not offer complementary job creation or innovation in more rural areas of America. Small towns only see a detrimental “brain drain,” rather than any rate of return on the education of their youth. Due to the amount of lower-skilled workers moving to these areas, they won’t suffer an immediate lack of potential employees. But the innovation and creation traditionally fostered by America’s bright young people will be solely concentrated in urban hubs, to the detriment of potential entrepreneurship in other areas.

The post-graduation path most commonly supported at the university level today is to pursue the highest-paying jobs, in the most stable and established companies. Washington, D.C., for instance, draws a lot of young professionals, due to the power and money that it can offer (to those who work hard and get an internship first). Young people are encouraged to become lawyers, doctors, engineers—not farmers, local dentists, or grocery store managers. But young people should be encouraged in ventures that feature local innovation and entrepreneurship, that laud the goods of small businesses and community investment.

However, this gravitation to the city also makes sense when you consider the burden of student loans that every college grad faces: they’re likely to seek a job in an area where wages are higher. And this presents another challenge for our society, as we seek to build a job climate in which graduates have options: we have to offer them something at the local level that can compete with urban-level opportunities. Or if we can’t compete wage-wise, we need to offer them other things—like housing, benefits, cultural offerings, etc.—that will make the move seem worthwhile. Otherwise, young people will continue migrating away from rural centers of commerce and civic life.

This sorting pattern could have cultural consequences, as well: we could see a growing disdain amongst urban elites for local culture, and amongst rural dwellers for urban life. We already see a growing divide in our political and social values, values often deeply divided between the urban and rural: Pew just released a poll tracking the increasing ideological uniformity and partisan antipathy in American society. Although their findings are not specifically tracked by geographic place, Pew does note that

“Ideological silos” are now common on both the left and right. People with down-the-line ideological positions – especially conservatives – are more likely than others to say that most of their close friends share their political views. Liberals and conservatives disagree over where they want to live, the kind of people they want to live around and even whom they would welcome into their families.

Ignorance and distance tend to breed derision and contempt for those with different tastes. Thus, people from more conservative, rural areas of America can develop a sort of tribalistic suspicion that is antithetical to inclusivity and community, just as urban, liberal centers can breed a variety of disdainful elitism that has a similar homogenizing influence on society. These suspicions and snobberies have always existed, to some extent, in American culture. But our growing separation, fostered by this intellectual sorting of persons, does a disservice to both parties, and widens both opportunity and cultural gaps throughout American society.

This is a trend that has been going on since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. When society was primarily agrarian, the rural parts were the centers of wealth, since agricultural production was the principal source of wealth. But as more and more production became industrial, and therefore urban, that center of wealth also began shifting to the cities. What we are seeing today is simply the maturation of that trend.

The question is, what incentive is there for any young person to remain in a rural area? Especially if that person has any “entrepreneurial” ambitions and/or abilities? What is he going to do, start a small store to compete with WalMart? Operate a family farm to compete with ADM? Suppose you do have a young entrepreneurially-inclined farmer who wants to go his own way by committing to organic farming, or growing new and different crops (you know, “liberal” “elitist” vegetables like kale or arugula), will he be able to do that successfully anywhere in the rural heartland? Or would he face disdain and ridicule from his neighbors? Where would his potential market be? Most likely, in one of those liberal elitist cities where he can sell his boutique produce to wealthy yuppies at a community farm market. So even he must move his farm to the exurban outskirts of the city.

Derek, you say “We are two warring nations”. But the reality is that only one “side” sees it as a war. The other side sees the natural progression of society’s shifting balance from agrarian to industrial, and wonders what all the fuss is about.

Probably the most fascinating outlier to the trend of rural=conservative is the state of Vermont. Vermont, which is one of the most rural states in America, is also the most liberal (according to election results) states in America. Barrack Obama won every county in Vermont and won the state with 67% of the vote.

“Ignorance and distance tend to breed derision and contempt for those with different tastes.” Ironically, the “intellectual” and cultural sorting (I’d sooner use the term “educational attainment” sorting)means that when one does bridge the gap and go from country to city or vice versa, they may also be more likely to view the new environment through the prism of the other environment to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As a young adult, I moved from the small coastal town in Maine where I grew up to Boston.

The problem is fairly simple: Opportunity. There are no decent jobs for someone my age in a small town. Aside from relatively menial jobs that I could have easily acquired without going to college (waiting tables, clerking for a small business… waiting tables) there’s very little in the way of careers available. We had a Bank of America credit card call center, which I did work at for about eight months after college, but that was a miserable experience.

On top of the extremely limited opportunities, there’s the relative lack of young people. Dating was next to impossible. Yes, there were people my age, but not many who were good dating material. Some had children of their own already. Most had very limited economic prospects, since most of them did not go to college like I did. And quite a few had… Baggage. Even if I had found a decent career in my hometown, I do not think I would have enjoyed the social life there.

Good point, Connor. But Vermont’s changes over the past half-century help prove Bill Bishop’s thesis of the like-minded seeking out other like-minded. For whatever reason, Vermont and western Massachusetts have attracted very liberal people from other parts of the country. Vermont was once the most Republican- perhaps not “conservative”- state in the Union and western Massachusetts nurtured Calvin Coolidge. But people like certain Rockefellers and Reeve Lindbergh have brought counterculture liberalism to the New England mountains and the old flinty Republicans have been submerged. The Vermont celebrated by Howard Frank Mosher- himself from the Catskills-is reduced to a curiosity. On the other hand, places like Idaho, West Virginia and Maryland’s Eastern Shore are moving the other way. Magazines like Countryside tutor a mostly conservative readership on living off-grid and rural. Ironically, single-payer national health insurance would encourage more conservatives to go off-grid and rural.

Vermont’s political culture is attributable to its virtually all-white racial composition (heavily civic-minded northern Euro ancestries) and remoteness from much of the nation’s problems. Vermonters, like Scandinavians, perceive a welfare state with broad social “tolerance” as just helping out people like themselves (physically and culturally). More diverse polities have the inevitable (given evolution) dynamic of Us-vs.-Them, which creates resentment of welfare states and of social mores perceived as rewarding the irresponsible behavior of one’s tribe’s antagonists.

“…people from more conservative, rural areas of America can develop a sort of tribalistic suspicion that is antithetical to inclusivity and community …”

“Can” develop? Like, it’s a possibility we should probably be aware of? Like shark attacks, not very likely, but unpleasant when they arrive?

To be sure, “liberal centers can breed a variety of disdainful elitism” could lose the conditional too. Urban areas are populated with rural refugees, converts to cosmopolitanism, and we all know there’s no zeal like the zeal of a convert.

The sad thing is that rural areas–addicted to reality television and internet porn and all the other accouterments of the hyper-industrialized age, no longer have anything other than their irritable mental gestures and their tribalistic suspicions to base their identities on.

“This is a trend that has been going on since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. When society was primarily agrarian, the rural parts were the centers of wealth, since agricultural production was the principal source of wealth.”

Actually, even pre industrial Western societies tended to make their cities their centers of wealth. Yes, most of the wealth was produced in farms, vineyards, pastures, fisheries, forests, etc, but the wealth tended to filter “up” to the cities, where the aristocrats had their town houses, where the merchants were centered, where the universities were located, where the Church had their cathedrals, and the State had its administrative, adjudicative and military centers. The arts have always been centered in the cities as well.

Seeking their share of that wealth, as well as fame, folks, especially young and ambitious folks, have been leaving rural areas to seek their fortunes in the cities for centuries, if not millennia. Moreover, urban and rural outlooks have always been different, and part of that difference has always been reflected in politics. Urban elites have always disdained what Marx called the “idiocy” of rural life, and rural folks have always been suspicious of city ways. Why any of this should now, all of a sudden, be seen as some sort of big problem is not clear.

If anything, rural areas, with today’s communications revolution piggybacked on yesterday’s transportation revolution, are, if anything, more like the urban areas, rather than less so, as compared to the past. Folks in rural areas get their books, TV, radio and movies from cities. And we all get our internet from one, big pot.

And, as mentioned, rural areas in what are otherwise “Blue” states or regions, like Vermont, or rural, western Massachusetts, are not necessarily all that much different, politically, from the urban areas that surround them. Similarly, politics in cities in “Red” states or regions, like Dallas and Houston, are not all that different from politics in the rural areas which surround them.

If political “sorting” by geography is the fear, it seems as if the larger sort of Blue State-Blue region/Red State-Red region is the more salient concern. Big, whole swaths of the country are one or the other, rather than an intra State area being divided up Blue and Red based on degree of urbanity.

Another thing to consider is that, whole foods and organics and eat locally notwithstanding, most rural products are now more or less mass produced on mega farms and mega animal growing facilities. If it were not for cheap, often illegal immigrant labor, even more of agricultural production would be mechanized, meaning even fewer jobs in rural areas. Like industry, there just aren’t all that many jobs left in the agricultural sector.

And that calls into the question the continued viability of many rural areas, and the “farm towns” that service them. When what used to be a county of ten thousand farms with fifty thousand residents is now really only a few, huge factory farms with a fraction of that many workers, one wonders why there is any need to continue with the county government, the county hospital, local law enforcement, etc. Unlike cities, which have become service hubs, there doesn’t seem like there is much of anything to replace agriculture in many areas. And many rural areas, particularly in the Midwest and Great Plains regions, are not particularly desirable from an outdoor tourist perspective either. With neither the cultural amenities of big cities, nor the scenery/wildlife of the mountains or coasts, the question of why these areas should continue to exist at all, except as big farming units, arises.

But, even leaving that aside, I still don’t see why the “City Mouse/Country Mouse” is any more of a problem now than it was before. Another false crises, if you ask me.

Charlieford, I must be short. Rod Dreher’s sister Ruth Leming lived a rather authentic life in rural Louisiana that must have appealed to Rod. Did you ever see the picture of Ruth butchering a deer, shot by her husband? That’s not porn, that’s sport and good food.

For the urban posters, it might help you to understand the rural mentality by listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “All I can Do is Write in a Song” by the late Ronnie Van Zant. You can listen on You Tube or by a CD if you are wise.

Just a little detail: becoming a dentist is virtually the equivalent of obtaining a medical degree. It’s a professional career with a great deal of training and associated prestige (not doctor-level, but still.)

Someone who goes through all that work, and accumulates all that debt, isn’t going to be able to *afford* to set up a rural practice, most often.

And yes, professionals of all stripes are increasingly liberal. They see the “red zones” within even blue states as pretty barbaric, and don’t want to live there.

And Laguna Beach Fogey, don’t flatter yourself with blather about a “civil war.” The last time the less-educated faction, the one with the poorer infrastructure and retrograde social attitudes started one, it didn’t work out so well for them, did it?

Its true that there has always been a city – rural divide and the rural have historically been priced out of major urban areas.

The fundamental source of the problem is that the US has been exporting jobs for the last 60 years. HRossPerot said it back when Bush & Clinton were debating NAFTA though it started long before.

The result, small town american has been eviscerated by large conglomerate global corporations rather than small individual farmers…and worse these small town agri-businesses want low wage immigrants and foreign workers who will work at or below minimum wage.

So small town america is frozen out of low wage jobs by immigrants. Their only hope is to escape to large cities which they are getting priced out of…only a limited number of high wage degrees will allow enough income to settle long term.

If you look at major manufacturing site locations being chosen, they are in suburban locations of midsize cities which bucks the trend.

The pricing disparity between large megacities and midsize cities and rural locations….reveals another trend of graduates leaving megacities once they have gained their experience. This is made easier because few young and old own property in cities. Instead they rent which makes them very mobile and very easy to leave for their next job.

Its very easy to come up with these blanket assumptions off narrow data but for it to be meaningul a full spectrum analysis of the data is meaningful.

There’s probably also something to be said for the relative lack of job security in America these days. In the past, a “company man” usually had decent job security, and taking a professional position in a rural area was lower risk. Now, people think that rural areas are traps, because they don’t want to settle down and then lose their job, meaning they have to move again. Young college educated people may take jobs in rural areas, but they have a disincentive to have families there, preferring instead to wait until they can be promoted/hired to somewhere with more fallback employment options.

“For whatever reason, Vermont and western Massachusetts have attracted very liberal people from other parts of the country.”

Yes, why could that possibly be? What could possibly cause a liberal-minded person who desires a rural life to leave Kansas and move to Vermont? Have any thoughts on that, Derek? Could it maybe have something to do with the attitude you expressed earlier of being “at war” with the other side? Maybe those liberal farmers just got tired of feeling like targets and decided to move to a place where they would be welcomed.

What we need is NOT a “civil war” between left and right, between races, between religions, or between city and rural.

Rather, we need to start adhering to the Tenth Amendment again.

The most bitter conflict, hatred, and resentment come when one “side” of an issue uses the federal government to impose its view, through unconstitutional federal statutes — not “law” — on the other side across the entire nation, whether it’s abortion, same-sex marriage, marijuana policy, seat-belt laws, speed limits, economic regulation, educational policy, etc.

Let every State determine its own laws and policies on all these things and much more, with little to no interference from the federal government, as the Tenth Amendment requires.

People who find it very important to live in a place where, say, homosexual marriage is allowed — or NOT allowed — can at least move from one State to another. By contrast, when the fed gov imposes one view on the whole country, one has to leave our country to “escape” the offending policy.

P.S. There would still be a rural/urban and other divides within each State, of course, and returning to the Tenth Amendment understanding admittedly wouldn’t solve the tension and conflict between those groups within a state.

Noah172: your explanation of Vermont is right on. Good-hearted people who don’t understand — perhaps don’t WANT to understand, in some cases — that their preference for a more expansive welfare state might not be so disastrous in a small, largely homogenous population with certain mores and values (like a strong work ethic and a corresponding sense of shame at using welfare benefits for very long), can be financially bankrupting and socially destructive when people from very different cultures and differing abilities are brought into the mix in larger numbers.

I’m not sure the situation is as simple, or as black, as the educational sorting implies. People with degrees may increasingly gravitate to the cities–but degrees in general mean a lot less than they used to. It all depends on which degrees. Where are the people with STEM degrees moving? I doubt very much that they’re moving to core cities. They may be finding their jobs and preferred lifestyle in the suburbs, but I’d say that the real line is to be drawn between the core cities and everywhere else, not between the metro areas and the rural areas.

Let them divide. Dividing is natural. Divisions are going to happen in America in any case due to the increasing, different, ethnic cultures in America. Real decentralization into states is what we are in for, and that’s okay, rather than civil war. We can hope federalism can hold it all together, as was intended.